Outlook 2003 slow performance

[Dave F]

When I open Outlook 2003, and after new messages are downloaded, and I
select a message, it is painfully slow to open the message. I usually have
the Reading Pane enabled.
Also, when I type a new message the text on the screen lags keyboard input.
There is no lag when I select Plain Text instead of HTML.
I'm wondering if my Norton Antivirus 2007 could be the culprit.

Thanks in advance
Dave

 

[Guest]

If you're using any antivirus to scan incoming and outgoing email, that could
be the culprit. It won't compromise your security to give that a try. Your
real time scanner will catch anything.

There are some inherent differences in Outlook 2003 compared to earlier
versions. Try the following:

Turn off "instant messaging" Q290025 (See instructions below)

Uncheck all planner options per article Q324374

Create hosts file on client IF you're connected to a network Q258495

Change rpc binding order, remove every protocol that you are not
using and have tcp/ip first. Q163576

Is the PC infected with spyware and/or viruses?

(1) Remove the link between Outlook 2003 and MSN Messenger, perform the
following steps:


1. Start Outlook.
2. From the Tools menu, select Options.
3. Select the Other tab.
4. Clear the "Enable the Person Names Smart Tag" check box in the Person
Names section, then click OK.
5. Close and restart Outlook for the change to take effect.


(2) Turn Off Speech Recognition

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options.
3. Click Regional and Language Options.
4. On the Languages tab, click Details.
5. Under Installed services, click Speech Recognition, click Remove,
and then click OK.
6. Click OK to apply all the changes. You may have to restart your
computer.

Please let me know if any of that helped or not. You may want to restart
Outlook and test inbetween the two suggestions to see if performance has
improved before continuing to the second suggestion.

 

[Dave F]

Kathleen,
The results of trying your suggestions did not provide any measurable
performance improvement. I'm not on a network, I didn't have Speech
Recognition turned on. Before I posted the original message I made sure I
didn't have any Spyware or Viruses.
The item that did make a small difference is in Norton Antivirus, under
Settings->Additional Options->Virus and Spyware Options->Advanced
Options->Miscellaneous, I unchecked "Turn on scanning for Microsoft
Documents".
While the improvement was measurable, I was hoping for much more.

Dave

 

[Guest]

Do you see any performance improvement if you open Outlook in safe mode
(Start > Run > outlook.exe /safe)?

 

[Guest]

Also, check to see if you've installed KB931768. If you have, remove it for
now. It's one of the culprits that may make Outlook 2003 slow. I haven't been
keeping up to know if they've come out with a fix or not.
Another question I have is whether or not you're using IE7. If you are, then
please try this:

Remove all of those entries in the Restricted Sites Zone - a quick way to do
this is to reset Internet Explorer's settings (Tools, Internet Options,
Advanced tab)

Stop using HTML (switch to Plain Text instead)

Use Word as Outlook's email editor.

***DO NOT*** to set Outlook to run in the Internet Zone.

 

[Dave F]

The performance has improved significantly after trying your suggestions,
one at a time. First, by starting Outlook in Safe Mode didn't change the
results.
Then, trying one at a time, here are the results.
1. Removing KB931768 resulted in the most significant improvement.
Hopefully MS will have a fix for this in the not too distance future.
2. Using MS Word as Outlook's email editor, using RTF resulted in more
improvement.
3. Finally, removing all the entries in the Restricted Sites Zone solved
some other issues, but not related to Outlook

Thank you very much for your invaluable assistance

Dave

 

[Guest]

Hi Dave,

Glad that this helped. Just an aside though that when using RTF as your
default format that there may be some issues that crop up from time to time
that are associated with it. RTF is specific to Outlook so non-Outlook users
may receive winmail.dat attachments and sometimes even no attachments at all.
If you see this, you can change an individual email format to plain text for
that particular recipient.
It's just a heads up for you.